title: Bringing the heart back into nursing.
abstract: This paper examines the growth in interest in complementary therapies in recent years; specifically in relation to nursing. A number of reasons appear to underpin the expansion into nursing practice--including their effects in the therapeutic potential of nursing and the desire by nurses to 'humanise' health care. The rise of complementary therapies, however, is seen as more than a desire to seek alternative treatments, or to seek help where orthodox medicine's role is disputed or as a reaction to our touch deprived 'high-tech' culture. Indeed it is argued, that seeing the complementary therapies as just another 'treatment' is to adopt a reductionist view as inappropriate and as limiting as orthodox methods. Nor is growth in interest in the complementary therapies an end in itself; rather it is a product of a wider, greater shift of circumstances that is taking place as a new millenium approaches.
authors.affiliation: TENDA, Tameside General Hospital, Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, UK.
authors.forename: S G
authors.initials: SG
authors.lastname: Wright
mesh_terms: D000529:Complementary Therapies; D004645:Empathy; D018939:Holistic Nursing; D006801:Humans; D010687:Philosophy, Nursing